She encouraged him in his idea of a representative collection of the old masters, and begged him to be cautious in his selection of moderns.

He felt himself to be delightfully situated indeed.
The difficulty with this situation, as with all such where an individual ventures thus bucaneeringly on the sea of sex, is the possibility of those storms which result from misplaced confidence, and from our built-up system of ethics relating to property in women.

To Cowperwood, however, who was a law unto himself, who knew no law except such as might be imposed upon him by his lack of ability to think, this possibility of entanglement, wrath, rage, pain, offered no particular obstacle.

It was not at all certain that any such thing would follow.
Where the average man might have found one such liaison difficult to manage, Cowperwood, as we have seen, had previously entered on several such affairs almost simultaneously; and now he had ventured on yet another; in the last instance with much greater feeling and enthusiasm.
The previous affairs had been emotional makeshifts at best--more or less idle philanderings in which his deeper moods and feelings were not concerned.

In the case of Mrs.Sohlberg all this was changed.